SHARE A BRAINWAVE

To add a nerdy touch to this Brainwave, I will say that, quantum mechanically, everything behaves as a wave. Light, heat, sound, magnetism–at a small enough scale all of these are treated as waves. The way things behave at human scales is just a simplification of this wave behavior. When you look at things on the nanoscale, however, the wave-like nature of matter is much more apparent. For many years, the problem was how to look at things at the nanoscale. The most powerful solution to this problem has been scanning probe microscopy where an atomically sharp needle is scanned over a surface to record the heights of atoms. When it was invented ~25 years ago, it was the first time you could directly see at the nanoscale. At the nanoscale, perhaps the most famous image in all of nanotechnology is can be found at http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/corral.html. It shows electron waves bouncing off atoms which are the “mountains” around the edge.

Also, a small comment on “How to make your own little wave.” You don’t need to pee into the ocean to make a wave. Look at the pee as it is falling–it’s already a wave that oscillates back and forth due to surface tension.

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